Paul Bunyan, who used a pine tree for a comb and once hitched his blue ox, Babe, to the foot of a river and hauled it into an adjoining prairie, would have been proud to claim credit for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
Chesapeake Bay is one of the world's great waterways. In effect, it is one huge harbor. Within its sheltered waters, Baltimore grew into a major port, and the U.S. Navy as early as 1917 picked Norfolk as its chief East Coast base. But its mouth, from Cape Charles on the north to...